Learning to fly, one mistake at a time
Hello,
Welcome to my litle part of the internet about learning to fly! As a slightly older guy now im ym 50s, who took up flying later in life, I am trying to share my own experiences and insights with you.
Learning to fly has been a dream of mine since I was a young boy, but I never had the opportunity to pursue it until later in life. It has been an exhilarating journey filled with challenges, triumphs, and a newfound sense of freedom.
I'm hoping to inspire others who may have similar dreams of taking to the skies. Whether you are a young person just starting out, or someone who, like me, has waited until later in life to pursue this passion, I believe that anyone can learn to fly with dedication, commitment, and the right mindset. So buckle up, let's take flight and explore the world of aviation together!
My journey first started in 2021, and this site together with YouTube to a certain extent is an attempt to document my experiences in the hope it will help others. I have had ups and downs, learning to fly is not easy, but it is one of the most rewarding things I have ever attempted.
Hopefully you will learn from some of my experiences, and enjoy learning to fly and flying as much as I have done.
A number of people have asked why the Whiskey Alpha Pilot name? Well it's Wayne Allen Pilot in the phonetic alphabet. It is that simple.
Start Here is well here. You are already here. Videos is easy. Thumbnails and Links to all the videos on my YouTube Channel. The Touch and Go Logbook, is basically my logbook, not of each individual flight, but the most notible occurances, as well as the odd comment of being a GA pilot in the modern world. AirFiled Reviews is a growling list id guess what Airfield Reviews - all my own experiences, and Kit Reviews is the same, but for the flying related kit I have bought. Lastly we have the Social Bits - all the places you can find me all over the internet.
Today is May the 4th. Star Wars Day. The day I get reminded that I used to do something a bit ridiculous before I learned to fly something a bit ridiculous.
Before KK, there was R2-TK.
For seven years my weekends weren't about Class G airspace and PPR forms. They were about screen accuracy, white panels, and a small blue-and-silver droid I'd built in my garage. I was a member of the UK Garrison, the British branch of the 501st Legion. And I was part of R2 Builders UK, the people who make astromech droids in their spare bedrooms because that is apparently a thing that grown adults do.
Caz was in on it too. She trooped as a Jawa. Please don't ask. Just please, don't ask me how bad shopping gets when your wife is a Jawa.
Some call it costuming, some call it cosplay. The technical term is trooping. Or, to put it mildly, dressing up as a plastic spaceman in a stifling hot uncomfortable costume you can barely see out of. Sounds like a PA28. Trust me, not much difference.
Then I grew up, a bit, and built a droid. Well, why not?
If you've never come across them, the 501st Legion is a global volunteer costuming group. Stormtroopers, Imperial officers, Sith, bounty hunters, the whole roll-call. The UK Garrison is the British branch, and there are over 400 of us across England and Wales. Worldwide, the Legion has 12,000+ members in more than 100 countries. The deal is simple. You build a screen-accurate costume, you turn up, and you spend your weekends being a friendly face inside a slightly menacing helmet.
It's a charity-driven outfit. Hospitals, hospices, military veterans, kids' wards. Hundreds of thousands of pounds raised every year. The dressing-up is the hook. The actual point is the fundraising and the kids. I've watched a child light up at the sight of an Imperial officer the same way I imagine they would at a real-life pilot. The costume is a permission slip for joy.
I built three costumes. A Stormtrooper first. Then a Biker Scout. And R2-TK. I trooped, and I was part of the command team for a stretch. So I wasn't just inside the helmet, I was helping co-ordinate where the helmets went. It was good work. Properly good. The kind of weekend that leaves you tired and pleased with what you have achieved.
Trooping with the UK Garrison took me to a lot of places. Four stand out, for very different reasons.
The first was Great Ormond Street Hospital. If you've never been involved in a GOSH visit, the only thing I can tell you is that it changes the way you think about volunteering. You walk in expecting it to be hard. It is. You walk out wondering how the staff there do it every day, all year, without the costume to hide behind. That one stays with you.
The second was a private screening at the BFI on London's Southbank. ILM staff and their families. R2-TK was invited along. The moment that sticks with me wasn't the screening itself. It was a chap who came over to say hello. Turned out he'd spent three years 3D modelling an R2 unit for work, and this was the first time he'd seen one in the flesh. Three years of pixels meeting 462 days of aluminium and paint. He was delighted. I was, frankly, a bit lost for words.
The third was a Rogue One screening at Farnborough Airfield in August 2019. R2-TK rolling around inside the airfield's old hangar framework, with a full Rogue One lineup. Stormtrooper, Shoretrooper, Death Trooper, Vader, Jyn Erso, Leia, an X-Wing pilot. Caz was there too, crewing rather than in costume that day. The setting did most of the work. Those exposed steel arches against an evening sky, full troop assembled underneath, R2 in the middle of the line. One of those nights where you stop and think: how did I get here, and why am I dressed like this, and would I change anything? No.
The fourth was a PR shoot for Essex & Herts Air Ambulance at North Weald in April 2022. Their AW169 on the apron at last light, full troop in front of it. Stormtroopers, an X-Wing pilot, a Scout Trooper, Chewbacca, R2-TK in the middle. The pilot flying the aircraft that evening is a friend of mine, which made the night a bit special in a way I won't write about here. He knows. Standing on a HEMS pad at dusk with a screen-accurate astromech in front of a helicopter that genuinely saves lives is not a normal Tuesday. It's a long way from a hospital ward, and at the same time it isn't.
Four highlights. One because of who you help. One because of who walks up to you. One because of where you happened to be standing. One because of who was flying.
The droid build is its own discipline. R2 Builders is a global group of obsessives who create screen-accurate astromechs from anything from machined aluminium parts to scrap from the kitchen, then painted to spec, with working domes and lights and sound. Some are radio-controlled. All of them take longer to build than you tell yourself they will when you start.
R2-TK is mine. He took 462 days to build. Slightly longer than waiting for a fuel stop at a busy field on a sunny Saturday, although it sometimes felt about the same.
The Elstree visit was during a charity open day. Many thanks to Elstree for letting us do that. They didn't have to. They could have looked at a man asking permission to take a four-foot droid onto an active airfield and quietly closed the door. They didn't.
R2 was, as I said in the Short, looking for a spare X-Wing. We didn't find one. He had to settle for a Cessna 172. A dream come true for a little astromech, all the same.
There was a stretch where the trooping and the flying were running in parallel. Saturday in costume at a hospital event. Sunday at Elstree with an instructor wondering why my radio calls had a slight Imperial cadence. Fun while it lasted, but something had to give.
Seven years was a good streak. Long enough to mean something, short enough not to outstay its welcome. I didn't fall out with the 501st or the R2 community. Both are still some of the best volunteer organisations I've come across. But Caz and I run a business together, and a business doesn't pause for charity events or build deadlines. The business comes first. Family flows from that. Then there's flying, which isn't a casual hobby. You know this if you're reading a UK GA blog. It eats weekends. It eats money. It eats the part of your brain that used to be reserved for other things. There wasn't room for everything.
Caz traded the Jawa robes for Disney vlogging. I traded the Stormtrooper helmet for a headset and a 1/5 of a Cessna 172. Different obsessions, similar brains.
So I stepped back. R2-TK still exists. The Stormtrooper and the Biker Scout are still in their boxes. I just don't get them out most weekends now. KK does.
Here's the thing nobody warned me about. The two hobbies are basically the same hobby.
R2 Builders rewards obsessive attention to detail. So does flying. Trooping rewards procedure, calm, and the ability to do the same thing the same way every time. So does flying. Charity events teach you to communicate clearly when you're hot and tired and your visibility is rubbish. Pretty handy, that one.
Same brain. Different uniform.
The difference is that one of them lets you go to Le Touquet for lunch.
These days I'd rather chase a £100 burger than a Death Star plan. Both involve a lot of preparation, an early start, and a moment where you wonder if you've thought it through properly. Only one of them gets you out of the country before lunchtime.
This isn't a flying lesson. I'm not qualified to give one. It's a small bit of context for anyone who follows the channel and wonders where the brain space for self-deprecating videos and overthought landings comes from.
It came from seven years of building things that didn't have to fly, before I started learning to fly something that does.
The brand thesis I keep coming back to is this. We never stop learning, and the day we do is the day we should stop flying. I learned to build a droid. I learned to wear a Stormtrooper helmet without complaining. I learned to stand still while a child asked me very serious questions about the Empire.
Now I'm learning how to land a Cessna without bouncing.
Same brain. Different obsession.
May the 4th be with you.
It seems that British Airways have updated their conditions of carriage. Passengers can no longer film, photograph or livestream cabin crew or other passengers without consent. Break the rule and you could be off the plane at the next landing, with your remaining flights cancelled, and the local authorities involved. KLM have done this for years. Virgin too. I fly Virgin regularly and the cabin announcement on every flight asks you to get permission before filming anyone else on board. So this isn't new. BA are just catching up.
My first reaction was that this should never have needed writing down. It's basic courtesy. You don't point a camera at a stranger, or at the family in the row across, without asking. We all know this on the ground. Somehow at 35,000 feet a chunk of the travelling public seem to forget.
A quick word on the law, because it gets misunderstood. In the UK, filming in a public place where there's no reasonable expectation of privacy is generally legal. I used to do photography professionally, so I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about this.
But "public place" is more nuanced than people assume. It isn't just anywhere the public can walk into. Sports stadiums, theatres, theme parks, gig venues, even some shopping centres. They're all ticketed or conditional spaces, and the conditions of entry routinely include filming restrictions. Next time you go to a match or a concert, have a read of the back of your ticket. You'll be surprised. An aircraft cabin is the same logic. You bought a ticket. The conditions came with it. The airline gets to set the rules.
And even where filming is legal, "legal" and "fine" aren't the same thing. Kids are the obvious one. Just because you can point a lens at a stranger's child in a park doesn't mean you should.
Then I caught myself. Because as a vlogging PPL holder, I point a camera at people in aeroplanes for a living. Sort of. So what's my code?
It's pretty simple. I always ask instructors before I film a flight with them. Always. And if they say not, then I don't ask why. I can understand a working instructor not wanting to be all over YouTube. They're doing a job. The camera is my hobby. Those two things don't get to outrank each other.
There's a softer version of the same rule for training flights. If I'm there as a student rather than as the pilot in command, the camera goes away unless we've talked about it first. I'm there to learn. The instructor is there to teach. Neither of us is there to make content. That bit matters.
Pilot in Command (PIC) and with my own passengers it's a different story. KK is my plane. Well a fifth of it is. I film what I like in her. And Caz is wifey. We film each other all the time. That's just the deal.
The BA story is being framed as a crackdown. It isn't really. It's just a big airline writing down what Virgin have been saying over the PA for years. Ask first. Accept no. Move on.
If you're a student pilot reading this and you're tempted to stick a GoPro on the dash for your next lesson, here's the only advice I'll give. Ask. If the answer is yes, brilliant. If the answer is no, that's the end of it. You'll learn more without the camera anyway.
Written in the cafe at Elstree, opposite Caz and her Snowgies. She runs Addicted to Disney. We're both in the content game. She didn't ask before I took this photo. She's wifey. That's the deal.
Every student pilot hears the same advice on day one. I even give the same advice now. Don't buy anything until you've got your licence or you really NEED it. Borrow, rent, use the school's kit. Wait and see if you actually stick with it.
It's good advice.... and I totally ignored it.
I walked into my second lesson with a brand new Bose A20 in the bag. A thousand pounds of headset, before I'd even worked out which way up to hold the checklist. Reckless? Maybe. Years later, am I glad I did it? Yes. Genuinely yes. And here's why.
The "don't buy anything" advice isn't wrong. It's just incomplete.
Here's the thing nobody tells you. You will find your early lessons overwhelming. I did. You're trying to fly an aeroplane, listen to the radio, follow your instructor, run a checklist, read a map, look outside, and not embarrass yourself. Your brain is not just full, it is bursting. There's no spare capacity for "this headset is digging into my ear" or "the mic boom keeps drifting" or "did that just crackle again?"
School headsets generally work. But they're not yours. Different fit every lesson. And you just know the good pair is always out with someone else and you end up with the one that's been sat on at least once.
What you save in money, you can pay for in cockpit stress. For me, having my own headset, sat right, every time, took one variable off the pile. That's not gear envy. That's reducing cognitive load when you're already drowning. And it makes you look more like a pilot. Trust me.
My instructor flew with an older Lightspeed . He was planning to upgrade to Bose the moment he had enough students lined up to pay for it at his hourly rate.
The Bose is not expensive. Well it ia, but It's an investment in comfort. And comfort, when you're flying isn't a luxury. It's a nessessarty.
So yes, expensive. Yes, against the conventional wisdom. But worth it.
For years, the Bose A20 was the near-default in GA cockpits. You'd see them everywhere. Flying clubs, instructor bags, the back seat of every Cessna with a passenger in it.
What does the £1,000 actually buy you? Active noise reduction that genuinely works. Comfortable clamping pressure. Bluetooth. Build quality that lasts. And longevity, in my case, that's well into the years now and still going.
The A30 has since superseded it. That's why second-hand A20s still hold their price surprisingly well. There's a healthy used market and they don't depreciate the way you'd expect. Bose seem to still repair them if needed. I haven't needed it, which is its own endorsement.
My background is in electronics, so this is the bit I'm actually qualified to talk about. Bear with me.
Active noise reduction sounds like magic but it isn't. There's a tiny microphone in each earcup listening to the noise outside. The headset reads the shape of that sound wave, then plays the exact opposite wave into your ear. The two cancel each other out. What's left is a much quieter cockpit, and the engine and prop noise drops away.
It works best on steady, predictable noise. Engine drone, propeller hum, airflow. Sudden sharp sounds are harder to cancel, which is why ATC and your instructor still come through clearly. That's the bit you actually want to hear.
Passive noise reduction is the old-school version. Just thick padding and a good seal around your ear. The A20s do both. The active part takes the steady drone away. The passive part keeps everything else out. That's why they still work when the batteries die.
Quick reality check. Aviation headsets don't plug into your home hi-fi or your PC. Different world entirely.
The standard GA setup is twin-plug. And one of those is a weird size. One jack for the headphones, one for the microphone. Two separate connectors, not the single 3.5mm you're used to on your phone. Some helicopters use a different connector. Some more modern aircraft use yet another one.
The good news is Bose sell adaptors and replacement cables, so a single headset can usually be made to fit whatever you're flying. The less good news is that's another thing to think about before you spend a thousand pounds. If you might fly something different down the line, or if your school's fleet is mixed, check the connector situation first.
This is the bit that matters. Reviews on day one are easy. Reviews after years of actual use are the ones worth reading.
Noise reduction. The C172 isn't a quiet aeroplane. The A20s make it civilised. After a two-hour flight you don't step out feeling battered, ears ringing, exhausted before you've even got the cover back on. Big deal. Underrated benefit.
They still work when the batteries die. Quietly brilliant, this one. Passive performance is good enough that I've forgotten to switch them on more than once and not really noticed. Not until I do switch them on mid-flight, anyway. Then it's a world of difference. The active noise reduction earns its keep the moment you turn it on.
Comfort on long flights. No clamping pressure issues. Forgettable on the head, which is the highest compliment any headset can get. Your head shouldn't notice your headset.
The case. Useful beyond the headset itself. Pens, spare AA batteries, the bits and bobs you always need and never have. Genuinely part of how I pack for a flight now.
Bluetooth. Pairs to the iPad running SkyDemon. Honestly? I don't always bother setting it up. Nice to have rather than essential. Worth knowing it's there when you want it. But I'm not selling it as a killer feature. Not all A20s have the bluetooth option either.
The price. Obviously. £1000 is still £1000 in any currency.
And the foam microphone cover. I managed to eat mine once, somehow. Don't ask. Then I lost the replacement. They're cheap to replace but easy to lose, and the headset feels naked without one. Order spares.
Beyond that? Genuinely nothing. No clamping issues. No comfort niggles. No reliability problems. Even on the price, everything in flying is expensive. Picking on the headset feels unfair when the aeroplane next to it costs more per hour to run than my mortgage.
I'm not planning to sell, so resale value is irrelevant to me. It's strong if you ever do, though.
Quick note on prices first, because it helps you spot the scams.
As of writing, there are usually a handful of A20s on eBay sitting somewhere between £500 and £600. That's the realistic second-hand market. Anything wildly under that, especially on Facebook from a profile you don't know, is almost certainly a scam.
Heads up if you're shopping second-hand.
The A20 is so common in GA that it's become a prime target for Facebook Marketplace and group scams. Same pattern every time. A too-good-to-be-true price, or a reasonable price - the scammers are not stupid. A couple of photos, normally stolen from another advert. A seller who's dad is giving up flying, r the have two many and are selling a spare.. But the end result is they want the cash and then they vanishs.
Red flags to watch for:
The scammers are getting smarter, by the way. Profiles look more lived-in than they used to. A few aviation-adjacent posts thrown in to look legitimate. Stay sceptical even when it looks fine on the surface.
If you're buying second-hand, buy from someone with a real flying footprint. Posts from a known club. A recognisable airfield in the background. Friends in the comments who actually fly. Better yet, a name someone in your circle can vouch for. The A20 second-hand market is genuinely good. You just have to filter the noise.
The headset conversation in any flying club always lands on the same three names. Bose, Lightspeed, David Clark. Here's where I sit on the other two.
The other big one. Half your flying club will be in Bose, the other half in Lightspeed. There's no clean winner.
I haven't owned a pair, so I won't pretend to review them. What I'll say is they're worth trying side by side if you can. Some pilots swear by the Lightspeed sound profile and find Bose too polished. Others go the other way. They are a little cheaper, similar features, comparable noise reduction. It's preference more than performance.
The green ones. The ones your instructor's instructor probably learned in.
The old schoolers swear by them. The one time I tried a pair, I was swearing at them. Born in the 1970s, iconic in Vietnam War films, and that's where I think they should stay.
Heavy. Tight on the head. Passive noise reduction only on the standard models. Built like a tank, which is part of the appeal if you're that way inclined. I'm not. Move on.
They exist. Caz has a pair of cheap SEHTs with noise cancelling, plus the famous Pooleys pink ones with no noise cancelling. The cheap ones do a job. They're fine for the occasional passenger flight. They're not in the same conversation as the A20s for serious use, but for a spare or a passenger headset, they earn their place.
I'm actually tempted to pick up a Lightspeed Zulu as a spare for Caz to try.
I asked Caz if she'd want a pair of A20s. She said yes. If they came in pink.
They don't. Bose does black, and that's it.
A real gap in the market when half your potential customers already own pink Pooleys for a reason. Bose, if you're reading this. Pink A20s. We'll talk.
Bose has moved on. The A30 is the current model, sitting at around £1,200 as of 2026.
Have I upgraded? No. Do I plan to? Also no.
The A20s still do the job they were bought to do. They're comfortable. They're quiet. They're reliable. Until they actually break, I see no reason to spend another twelve hundred quid.
Unless Bose fancies sending me a pair of A30s to compare, of course. They won't. But it'd be rude not to ask.
For me, yes. With caveats.
It's worth it if you're committed to flying for the long haul, not just trying it out for a couple of lessons. It's worth it if comfort and one less cockpit worry matters to you in those overwhelming early hours. It's worth it if you can afford it without it hurting, because flying will hurt your wallet plenty in other ways.
It's not worth it if you're still deciding whether flying is for you. School headsets exist for a reason. Use them. See if you stick with it. Then spend the money once you know.
The honest verdict? I bought them as a nervous student. I'm still flying with them years later. They've outlasted my early panic, several different instructors, and one chewed-off mic foam. That's the review.
So tell me. Did you splash out early or hold off? Are you Bose, Lightspeed, or stubbornly David Clark? And has anyone, anywhere, ever managed to keep a foam mic cover for more than six months?
Thats it for now. If you're new round here, the rest of the kit reviews are at https://whiskeyalphapilot.com/kit-reviews. There's a YouTube channel too, where I'm slowly working out how to fly properly while filming myself doing it.
Pink A30s, Bose. You know where to find me.
Because here's the thing. A grand for a headset isn't expensive. It's an investment in comfort. And in a cockpit, comfort is what lets you focus on the bit that actually matters: flying the aeroplane.
It had to be my first review, as it is my home airfield and therefore I might be a little biased. It is the home of Flight Training London, the school I trained with, which is the biggest training school on the airfield. Mainly C152s and PA28s, with a DA40 and a DA62. Nice airfield with quirks.
